In her book Pests, Bethany Brookshire provides several examples of introduced species becoming huge destroyers of local wildlife and ecosystems. One of the most well-known (and perhaps, if you dislike snakes as much as I do, most terrifying) examples of this phenomenon is the Burmese python in Florida. A whole section of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission website is devoted to documenting the extent of the problem—and enlisting residents to try to bring it under control.

Opinions vary about precisely when and how this species, which is native to Southeast Asia, arrived in the Florida Everglades. The issue started sometime in the late 1970s and 1980s, when some owners of exotic snakes took to abandoning their pets in South Florida wetlands. According to some sources, the problem became widespread after 1992's Hurricane Andrew destroyed a python-breeding facility, allowing dozens of the animals to escape into nearby swamps. Current estimates place the ...